


Finding Mr. Right

by wreathed



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Betrayal, Break Up, Dating, F/M, Humor, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-21
Updated: 2010-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:09:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He <i>was</i> charming, in a weedy, curly-haired man-child sort of way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Mr. Right

The first time they meet, they drink solidly for an hour and then have sex in a hotel toilet.

It isn’t one of Emma’s proudest moments, but Peter’s schmooze-fest is beyond boring and the venue isn’t even that nice. But there definitely is a free bar.

Mostly to escape from a particularly pleased-with-himself Phil telling her about how much the shadow home sec had laughed at his oh-so-inspired joke, she makes her way to a tray of filled and waiting wine glasses and accidently-on-purpose bumps into the tall, dark-haired man, standing alone. (This fact should have told Emma something about the level of political influence he possessed, but she hadn’t been thinking entirely straight at the time.)

Over the chatter it’s hard to make out precisely what he does (Ollie, definitely, but...some sort of policy advising, surely for our side? He’s wearing the right colour tie, anyway) but they bond over a shared distaste of the occasion and the fact that he tells her she has lovely eyes. He tends to alternately say something agreeable followed by something utterly dickish, but a half-and-half ratio’s not that bad and Christ, everyone other male in this room (apart from Phil of course, and one of the waiters) must be _at least_ forty five.

This, combined with the fact that she doesn’t speak to many people outside of work these days – and every man she works with is either ancient, attached or so party-poster-boy-android she’s not even sure whether they _have_ a cock between the lot of them – it doesn’t take all that much wine for her to think this relative stranger leading her away is a good idea.

So, they fuck in a stall in a haze of drink-induced blasé, and then Ollie promptly leaves.

It’s certainly not the best basis for a relationship, but though Emma had never expected (perhaps never wanted) to hear from him again, he actually _calls_ the next day (suspiciously Scottish-sounding background noise aside). And, well, it’s not like the encounter had been mind-blowing or anything but she’d had a good sort of time and he _was_ charming in a weedy, curly-haired man-child sort of way and you’ve got to take these chances when you get them, haven’t you?

*

In the first couple of weeks, they had a lot of sex. (Looking back on it, this was probably because then was when they didn’t know each other very well and they’d probably been a bit deprived prior.)

Once, at four in the morning, Ollie is inside her and Phil is fucking _banging on the wall_ from his bedroom, next door along.

“Fuck off, Phil,” Ollie says, shouting a little too close to Emma’s ear for her liking (and in a slightly squeakier voice than his normal). “Quieten down in your _closet_ and do not fucking disturb, or I’ll take the DVD of _Four Weddings And A Funeral_ and shove it up your arse.”

Ollie had finished a couple of minutes later and immediately fallen asleep. Like his conversation, shagging tended to oscillate between the lucky, the acceptable and the dire.

*

A lot of the time he’s quite distant. He never wishes her goodbye properly when he’s leaving her in public, but then Emma supposes he’s just that sort of person.

Until she realises he doesn’t wish her goodbye properly when he’s leaving her and they’re alone either, a realisation she responds to by shouting at him for not knowing how to cook _nasi dagang_ rice.

*  
She only overhears him plotting once.

“No,” Ollie hisses into his mobile outside her flat’s bathroom door, “don’t you think that looks just a little bit too obvious? ‘Oh, hi, Emma, I’ll just start leaving my stuff here now, yeah, like my toothbrush and my spare pair of glasses and, ooh, look, a folder of social integration figures with a fucking pressed flower between each page so you can think of it as a nice romantic gift.”

Another few seconds later she hears him backing down, and Emma debates to herself whether Ollie really is that spineless or spin really is that terrifying.

*

She never brings him to meet her parents or anything like that. Daddy would _hate_ him.

*

“Sometimes it feels – felt – right, you know? But a lot of the time I can barely stand the sight of him – and Phil loathes him, of course – and we don’t really talk all that much anymore, not really, but he drops in whenever he fucking feels like it ever since I gave him a key.”

“Going to get rid of him?” her friend asks her down the phone. “‘Cos it sounds like you bloody should.”

“Yes,” Emma says as she switches the muted TV to _Newsnight_ and puts on subtitles so at least she only has to see Dan Miller’s smarmy face rather than hear his smarmy voice. “I will. Very soon.”

*

“‘If I had been allowed to’! I _knew_ he’d been doing this under Tucker’s orders! Didn’t I tell you? He probably never even liked you,” Phil points out cheerfully.

“Fuck off, Phil. Go and crow about your victory somewhere else.”

*

It’s Affers that gives her the much-needed, Whitehall-free hug and listens as she vows to find a nice, rich merchant banker and be done with the whole bloody thing.


End file.
